1987 Honda Accord

I don’t even want to think about my car any more.
The plan was to replace the rear wheel cylinders, and the front pads, and bleed the lines.
Well, I couldn’t detach the cylinder from the brake line, so I bought new brake lines from NAPA. Unfortunately NAPA doesn’t carry the lines with metric fittings, so although they’ll fit, they aren’t 100% snug. And with brakes, anything less than 100% isn’t good enough. The local Honda dealer doesn’t stock the lines, so they have to be special ordered. I need to pick up some silicone grease to do the front pads. I might do that today. I’m fairly annoyed right now. My car has been up on stands since Sunday, and it will probably stay there for another week until I get those lines. Just another reason to buy OEM parts. Because half the time the aftermarket parts are completely useless.

Today I changed out the D-ring gasket in the thermostat housing. You can see previous posts regarding the damned thing here, here and here.
Thanks to a post I read over at 3Geez I decided to try and remove the stuck EGR pipe with a pipe wrench. It did a nice job,, even though there wasn’t much room to turn the wrench, the teeth bit right in to give the grip needed. It was a very time consuming project. Once I had the housing off, I also replaced one of the heater hoses to the heater core. 5/8 hose is what you need. But I didn’t replace the others because it’s a pain.
I used 600 and 1500 grit sandpaper to smooth down the surfaces of the thermostat housing mating surfaces. A nice smooth surface helps to make a tight seal.
I would definitely recommend draining your coolant before attempting this project. I thought I’d just drain it a little, but that didn’t work. I had coolant pouring out every which way, when I removed the housing, and it ran right over ther starter motor and the speed sensor. I decided not to start up the car once I was all done, because the rear brakes aren’t on the car, and I decided I didn’t want to risk messing up something with them. I’m confident I fixed the leak however.
Yeah, right.
Here’s a picture of the old D-ring. It is very brittle and broke apart when I removed it from the housing.

I worked on my car for a long time yesterday. I replaced the parking brake cable. It was pretty easy. There were no major snags doing that. Replacing the wheel cylinders, was not so easy. The brake lines going into the wheel cylinders were frozen solid. A wrench just rounded them off. Even vise grips didn’t have an effect. I thoroughly coated them with PB blaster, which is supposed to be good for removing rust, but it had no effect. So I ordered a few new 8 inch sections of bendable brake lines from NAPA. They should arrive before the end of the week. I went to Autozone because their website said they stocked them, but the guy said the shortest one he had was about 36 inches. I’m also going to replace the front brake pads. Out of the 4 pads, 3 are in great shape, and one is completely gone. That probably means the caliper isn’t moving freely, hopefully I can free it up without rebuilding it.
The old parking brake cable had a pinhole in it, which allowed the cable to slowly rust from the inside.
Since my car is unusable for a few days, I’m thinking I’ll make another go at replacing the thermostat housing gasket, or maybe I’ll do a valve adjustment if I can figure out how to rotate the crankshaft.

I got the parts today. That’s the fastest internet shopping experience I’ve ever had. Less than 24 hours from ordering to receiving. And I just selected standard shipping, which was free. I highly recommend Active Auto Parts

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In car news, I ordered a new parking brake cable, and a couple of wheel cylinders. I decided the master cylinder is probably okay, and I think replacing the cable, and thouroughly bleeding the system will make my brakes significantly better. I ordered the parts yesterday afternoon from Active Auto Parts and surprisingly, they are due to arrive here today. UPS from New Jersey to Boston.
Please be sure to notice the links, on the right side of the page.

It turns out that the cable for the right rear parking brake is frozen. And of course it was frozen in the on position, so that brake has been dragging for a while. I couldn’t unstick it, so I just moved it to the off position, and disconnected it from the parking brake lever. I’ll have to replace the cable, and it doesn’t look like fun. It appears that parts of the exhaust have to come out to allow access to replace the cable. So now my brake work includes the master cylinder, both rear wheel cylinders, and a cable. I might just replace both cables while I’m at it. Argh. Fortunately I will soon be unemployed and have all the time to do this stupid shit.

I spent the whole day rebuilding the carb. What a nightmare. Actually, it started off really well. I took the carb apart and cleaned everything. I labeled everything, and took pictures to help me put it back together. It went back together okay, and then I put it in the car. The car started up, and all seemed well. Then I noticed that fuel was leaking out a part of the carb called the accelerator pump. And coolant was leaking out of the hose where the coolant line attaches to the carb. Argh. So I had to take the whole thing out. Fixing the coolant leak was easy, I just switched from those spring type hose clamps to the screw type ones, and screwed it down tight. Fixing the accelerator pump was harder. The pieces just weren’t sealing well. I sanded them down to a nice smooth finish so they’d mate better, and on the second installation of the carb, it wasn’t leaking anymore that I could see. So I tweaked the idle settings, and called it a day. Something still isn’t working quite right. It gets stuck on the fast idle cam. Either the choke opener, fast idle unloader, or electric choke isn’t working right to retract the fast idle cam soon enough, because it spends way, way too long running over 2000 RPM before it goes to a normal idle, which I set to around 900RPM. Tomorrow I need to find out what’s up with the rear brakes. Maybe they just need an adjustment, but I think one might be leaking.

I disassembled and reassembled my old carb with little problems. And I picked up the gasket set. I’m ready to do the rebuild on my carb. I think the O-ring between the carb base and the EFE heater was where the leak was occurring. My gasket is all flat, it was flush with the EFE heater. The new gasket is nice and round like it should be. I can’t wait to install it. But the bad news is that on the way home my brake pedal sank to the floor. I hope it doesn’t do it tomorrow. I just want to make it through the week. I’ll buy a new master cylinder this week. Unfortunately since I broke off one of the bleed bolts in the rear, I’ll have to replace the wheel cylinder. And I think I’ll replace both just to keep thinks the same in the back. It should be good though. I’m getting a hell of a lot of practical experience. Now I just need a job where someone pays me to do this!

I spent a few hours replacing the carburetor. I bought a used one on eBay for about $60 and I installed it today. I had to swap the fast idle unloader over from the old carb because one of the vacuum lines on the new carb was broken. The car runs like a dream now. There may have been a leak at the base of the carb, where it mates with the EFE heater. I bought a carb gasket kit, and the gasket between the carb and the EFE heater from Boch Honda. They had to have the parts shipped in, so I’ll pick them up tomorrow. If the car keeps running well, then I’ll wait a few weeks to to the rebuild, and to replace that base gasket. I’m so pleased! My car isn’t dying, it just wanted a new carb. I had to tweak the idle speed a hair, and adjust the float level, but that is to be expected. A test run showed no problems.

Bah. Stupid car. I replaced all the vacuum hoses today. The car is still having problems. I bought a used carb off eBay, and it should be here this week. Replacing vacuum hoses is tedious work, and a general pain in the ass, but it is done.\